Sydne Horton drew on her personal history for her latest short film.
The 2013 Carmel High School graduate said “Saturday Ritual” was inspired by an actual experience that happened to her and two of her best friends in high school.
“Long story short, a psychic outed me in front of my friends and to myself,” said Horton, who wrote and directed the film. “Growing up in (the) Indianapolis (area), I hadn’t really been exposed to queer representation and, therefore, I never imagined that as a possibility for myself. So, when this psychic continued to insist there would one day be an ‘influential’ woman in my life, I became combative, defensive and eventually defeated. Years later in college, I discovered the psychic was right and it became a running joke for my high school friends and I.”
The friends visited the Psychic Fair in Indianapolis a few times when Horton was a CHS junior.
“We just thought it was a silly, fun thing to do,” Horton said. “Our parents didn’t think it was a wise way to spend money. We did it for a month every Saturday.”
At first, Horton assumed the influential woman was her adopted mother.
“I thought she’s incredible, she changed my life and the psychic insisted it wasn’t her,” Horton said.
The 12 1/2-minute film had its world premiere at Palm Springs ShortFest. It then was shown at the Wyoming International Festival and LA Shorts International in July.
This is Horton’s sixth short film. She said she has a feature version of “Saturday Ritual” ready to go.
“I’m in the process of finding investors and financiers to help bring the expanded vision of this story to life,” said Horton, who graduated from Columbia College in Chicago in 2016 and works in film production in Los Angeles.
Horton said the film has comedic elements.
“I wanted it to be more uplifting for viewers because there are enough sad stories for queer kids,” she said. “Instead of coming out, we focused on the character coming to her own identity and how that can be funny, awkward and weird. What we heard at the world premiere was how funny and relatable it was.”
For more, visit sydnehorton.com
